Let me get this out of the way first: I watched Prince of Persia today and it was awful. Don’t go see it; not even the fight scenes were particularly well-constructed.

My real delight today was watching the film adaptation of Hamlet with Mel Gibson. For what it’s worth, I think that it is the best film adaptation of that play. Its emotional depth is surprising given most other adaptations are rather dreary.

And what lovely acting! Mel Gibson presents a memorable Hamlet, but it’s fascinating to watch the other brilliant actors in the supporting roles. Ian Holm gave a memorable performance as Polonius—witty and wise, just as Shakespeare intended. I was shocked to discover that Helena Bonham Carter (who played Ophelia) is a talented actress when she doesn’t hide behind eye liner and Alan Rickman.

After learning Vim, I thought it would be useful to share my knowledge with other programmers. These tutorials assume that you don’t have any experience with Vim, but may even be useful for intermediate Vim users.

I’ll be uploading more in the weeks to come, but even just the movement commands are useful.

You can watch my tutorials at: http://vimeo.com/channels/zombiezenvim

Upon doing some research today, I found a new element that’s worked its way into the HTML5 spec: the <device> tag. What this will allow web developers to do is have a standard way of using a device on the user’s computer (like a webcam or microphone).

What could this mean? The obvious one is video-chat capabilities without Flash, but I’m seeing this as a huge bridge between the desktop world and the web world. Just imagine: Flickr could upload pictures directly from your camera without any extra software, or browser games could use your joysticks natively. If this specification goes through, we could be looking at a dramatically different web.

So Towel Day has come to an end. I listened to a couple episodes of the original radio show. I carried around a towel all day.

So long, and thanks for all the fish, Mr. Adams.

Tomorrow is Towel Day (Wikipedia article), a celebration of the life and humor of the esteemed Douglas Adams. For those who don’t know, Douglas Adams was the writer of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy radio show (which eventually got turned into a book, which was turned into a movie that wasn’t quite as clever) and was a frequent contributor to the BBC show Doctor Who. He passed away on 2001-05-11. Tomorrow is the tenth celebration of Towel Day, a tradition which started two weeks after his death.

So bring a towel, the most useful thing in the universe, with you tomorrow, and celebrate a great man. And DON’T PANIC.